The real movements came to light after the Navy released a photograph showing the Vinson off Java over the weekend.

White House officials said on Tuesday that they had been relying on guidance from the defence department.

A defence official told the AFP news agency on Tuesday that the ships were still off the northwest coast of Australia.

Lawrence Korb, a former US assistant secretary of defense and a retired Navy captain, said the conflicting messages were "very typical of how the Trump administration does business".

"They send mixed signals all the time," he told Al Jazeera. "They don't have their whole team in place. There is a secretary of defense, but he has no deputies or assistants to work with him.

"You wonder who's in charge, who was following up ... Given the volatility of the situation, this is not a mistake you can afford to make."

The announcement that the Vinson had been dispatched to the region increased tensions with Pyongyang, with its official Korean Central News Agency calling the carrier's deployment "nothing but a reckless action of aggression to aggravate the tensions in the region".

The US ratcheted up its rhetoric ahead of North Korea's military parade and failed missile launch over the weekend, and Vice President Mike Pence on Monday declared that the era of US "strategic patience" in dealing with Pyongyang was over.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un responded with his own fiery warnings and threatened to conduct weekly missile tests.